Get to know Adwoa Aboah, the rich girl who beat drugs and depression to be the UK’s top model
The 25-year-old fashion sensation opens up about the dark days of her drug addiction and two overdoses and why she now dedicates her spare time to helping girls combat mental health problems
SHE is the sultry skinhead tipped for superstardom on the catwalk.
But since her 14th birthday British model and activist Adwoa Aboah has battled drug addiction and mental illness.
She was once so consumed by her problems that she twice overdosed following a stint in rehab — the second time a deliberate attempt to take her own life.
Adwoa, 25, recalled feeling like she “couldn’t be bothered to feel any emotions any more”.
This week, the in-demand Adwoa was nominated for Model of the Year ahead of December’s leading Fashion Awards.
It follows a whirlwind 12 months in which she has graced the cover of American Vogue, been named GQ Woman of the Year and walked for Chanel, Dior and Burberry.
Having had a privileged upbringing in West London with parents who still work in the fashion industry, it would be easy to assume her career path was mapped out from the start.
But Adwoa insists her Ghanaian dad Charles, a location scout, and British mum Camilla, who runs a creative agency, never pushed her into modelling.
She was not one for make-up, kept her hair frizzy and did not fit in with the other girls at school.
Her troubles really began when, at 13, she went to Millfield boarding school, near Glastonbury, Somerset.
She maintains it was as much her choice to go as her parents’, but concedes it was a “pivotal moment”.
Adwoa smoked her first spliff on her 14th birthday then, at 15, went to her first Glastonbury festival and took ecstasy before moving on to cocaine, although she claims she was “never really into that”.
Her experimenting turned into an addiction to ketamine.
She has said: “The people I’ve grown up with take a lot of drugs so it wasn’t necessarily unheard of.
“It was normal so I got away with it for a long time.”
She began taking the drug almost every day as she fell further into the depths of depression, escalating when she attended Brunel University down the road from her London home.
After a particularly bad binge at 21, her parents sent her to Cottonwood Tucson rehab centre in Arizona in the hope she would get clean.
She has said: “To everyone else in the outside world I was doing really well, but inside I was just slowly crumbling.
“I stopped hanging out with really good friends because they would be the ones to ask me how I was. No one knew how bad it was.”
On her return to London she was sent to a halfway house but admits it was too soon.
Feeling overwhelmed, she overdosed almost immediately.
She recalled: “I remember thinking I couldn’t be bothered to feel any emotions any more.
“You could be in the most amazing place in the world and everything is grey, everything is bleak and numb.”
Her continuing battle with depression and bipolar culminated in a suicide attempt on October 3, 2015. Adwoa took a deliberate overdose and was in a coma for four days.
It was only at Christmas, when she was surrounded by her family, including her model sister Kesewa, that she realised how lucky she was to still be alive.
Now she celebrates the date, saying: “In a weird way it’s like a birthday for me. I like to remember where I was and where I am now. It’s not something I’m going to forget. I could have very easily not been here, so I feel like it’s respectful to remember.”
Two months on from her darkest period, she scored her first Vogue cover, for the fashion bible’s Italian edition.
Since then Adwoa’s life has got even better.
She credits getting through this year’s Glastonbury festival sober as a benchmark for her recovery and now lives a teetotal, drug-free lifestyle, her only vice being cigarettes.
Aside from her stellar modelling career, she is keen to use her past to help other young women struggling with mental health issues.
She said: “It doesn’t matter what race or class or demographic you come from, I truly believe sadness is relative.” Adwoa spoke openly about her battles on camera for the StyleLikeU YouTube channel.
Then came the launch of her Gurls Talk, an online community where women can discuss how they really feel in a safe space.
She said: “When I’m around those women, so much of the burden I carry, the depression and the bipolar, the fear of ever going back into that dark hole, is completely taken away.
“When we’re all taking part I don’t have to be ashamed about it or explain myself, they all understand.
So Gurls Talk is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s.”
This is her real passion project, gaining pace with more than 100,000 Instagram followers and hosting talks and workshops for women.
But she refutes the idea that being a model was to blame for her drug addiction, saying: I was a teenage girl, I felt awkward the whole time.
“There’s not one particular community or industry that should be blamed, but I do think there’s this atmosphere at the moment where the simple life isn’t enough.
“It’s just more, more, more, and that puts a lot of pressure on young women, whether it’s wealth and success or being stick thin.”
She continues to deal with being bipolar on a daily basis, but is much more optimistic about her future.
And with good reason.
Rumoured to be dating photographer Riccardo Ambrosio, she is splitting her time between her parents’ London home and her apartment in New York. She is often spotted hanging out with her best friend and fellow model Cara Delevingne.
The pair have been best mates for almost ten years and even have matching half-heart tattoos.
Cara interviewed Adwoa for a Teen Vogue last year and told her: “There are people who are a constant inspiration, people I look up to and who make me want to be stronger — you are one of them to me.”
Also friends with new Vogue editor Edward Enninful, she has been given the role of contributing editor for the magazine and has even tried her hand at acting by appearing in this year’s sci-fi action film Ghost
In The Shell alongside Hollwood actress Scarlett Johansson.
But drama does not stray too far in real life.
After she admitted having an abortion earlier this year, she added: “I knew it would be horrible. But even that experience taught me so many things, how grateful I am to be a woman in the 21st Century, able to make that decision.
“And if someone comes into my life who needs to have that conversation, I can have it.”
With a no-holds-barred attitude, as well as incredible looks, Adwoa is definitely one to watch.